


epilogue in verse

by NerumiH



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: F/M, Hitoshizuku x yama, The 13th Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5367908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerumiH/pseuds/NerumiH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wish for the dream to go on, and on, and on, and on, and on…</p><p>– The 13th Apocalypse. Len/Rin, after sweeping the sleeping beauty from her tower to find better dreams…but fate will not stay mute in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	epilogue in verse

**Author's Note:**

> THEY'RE SO IN LOVE AND IT'S SO GROSS. Honestly, I really enjoyed getting to write so many adorable, fluffy, fairy tale clichés…for most of it.

He caresses her hands in his.

It's frightening. It may be innocent,  _childish_ , after all the passion that precedes them, but in this new world, she feels a fluttering of delicate wariness…the way one must feel before a kiss, or when meeting a charming eye across the room. He has removed their gloves and his hands are soft against hers; the strength in them has long bled away and they feel as frail as her own.

She had dreamt for ages about what his earthly touch would be. She did not anticipate something so shaky. In this awakened world, he is not an intimidating knight, but someone far gentler. He'd coaxed her into consciousness instead of sweeping her from the darkness, sword flashing; she woke up lying in his arms like a goddess's cradle.

She is frightened…but finally, truly with him.

"Leave it," she breathes, and tries to turn her hand away, but something feels so manipulative about her using his own tenderness against him.

He shakes his head. They've been running for ages but his hair isn't so much as pricked out of place by the brambles. He smooths open her palm with his thumb, tips of his fingers feathering her skin until he reaches the point of her first finger and she holds her breath.

He grazes over the evidence of a pinprick. Something inconsequential and forgettable. As if she'd only admired a rose too closely, or touched wet paint on her lips – but the mark is venomous.

(It is what scares her the most.)

"I couldn't tell you," she says shakily. "I thought…"

He eases their palms together in a perfect match, concealing the cut in his warmth. "It doesn't matter."

Her breath catches. "You – you saw what happened – I can't  _control_  it – "

"Hell is behind us."

He says it with such a relaxed certainty that it can't help but fill her with the illusion, too. As if he is scrawling their happy ending in a prophecy; he will try to guarantee her freedom. All along, wasn't that what he was supposed to do? A foreign prince, ignorant of the princess's curse…fall immediately, irrevocably in love…kiss her and revive her from her endless sleep…but at the same time, rip them from their peaceful, loving dreams.

(And doom himself with an inevitable end because of her.)

He squeezes her palm – but he's too late for this display of protectiveness. Louder than his assured voice is his shaking. She can feel it: a tiny storm between them. To her, it is more powerful than their infinitesimal love, love that flickers like dying candlelight in the shadow of her demon. Her curse cannot die. She has seen it ruin them once. Love does not cure such things.

Love is temporary, even with him.

 _"_ _It_  may have gone…" She slides her hand from his, tearful. "But you can't escape  _me_."

He smiles and she can tell – she's been inside his head, after all – that it is pained. "I never intend to."

**.x.**

_"_ _Kill me."_

_His reaction glows to her with perfect clarity, despite the curse erupting from her skin, despite the megalomaniac enormity of the monster cracking her ribs out of place, and despite all her_ _**fear** _ _that after all he had given her, the only thing she could offer was a nightmare._

_He'd stumbled backwards, a consuming horror staining his features. Just a second ago, he had been porcelain and handsome and bright. But it was all snuffed out because of her. Because of her. Beyond the thunderstorm roaring from the immolation of her body, she wants to cry. To say she's sorry. She knew – all along, she knew what she would do, and still fell for him…ensnared him in the thorns of her love._

_His eyes flick to the smoke pouring from her. His legs give out and he barely catches himself against the wall._

**_"_ ** **_KILL ME!"_ **

_She can't bear to see him like this – she's cruel, monstrous, soulless, and a moment more with him in danger will torture her beyond sanity –_

_And then a solidity pours over his features. His shoulders square with a heavy breath, and, though he shudders, he takes a step towards her. She clutches her hands over her face, and through the darkness she forces on herself, he says like a flash of lightning: "No."_

**.x.**

He takes her down the path that he tore apart to reach her. The vines, curling from sources an infinite distance above, now litter the grass, writhing and dark like eviscerated snakes. He holds her hand.

She's been so cold for so long.

She doesn't know how long it's been – decades, it must be, but how close to a hundred? She knows her own lore. She knows what makes her a tale that they use to frighten children. Her whole life she was haunted with her own fate…but it was always only  _hers_. She never meant to bring anyone into it, much less someone like him.

She presses into his arm, hugging tight, and he draws to a stop. Staring at the ground, she's too afraid to ask if something is wrong, but he answers her worry by slipping his arm from hers and slowly kneeling at her feet. He rests on a knee, and shyly enamours her with a crooked smile.

"Our meeting – " he says, stumbles over evasive words, and tries again, "We met in unfit circumstances for…for a proper introduction." His head sweeps down, white-blonde hair awash with the dim light of the forest, and a hand presses over his heart. "Your Royal Highness. My princess. I – "

"No," she whispers. He obediently freezes, but doesn't look up. His fingers flutter on his jacket. "No, please, don't. I'm not – I'm not that."

_I'm a monster. I'm your downfall. I'm the laughter over the destruction of a soul as kind as you._

"I'm…" She takes a breath to steady herself, then delicately holds out her hand to his bowed head. "I'm  _yours_."

His head snaps up; she meets his look of awe with a staunch smile. How she wishes to smile with the same ease and honesty. But he doesn't seem to mind. He takes that hand in his again, and kisses the soft ridge of her knuckles, firing a luminous thrill through the shadow of her dread.

"And I, yours."

He rises to his feet. Standing before her, she can appreciate his height, appearance – his sheltering aura. He's unimposingly handsome, slight and tall enough for her to easily tuck into his embrace, his clothing snow white, eyes pastel blue like a misty sky after a sun shower.  _A fairy tale_ , she immediately thinks. All those sparkling fantasies of heroes and damsels and dragons fill her up like champagne. And princesses? Can she call herself that? After what has happened to her kingdom, her family…what has happened to  _her_?

"Rin," she says. "Please call me Rin."

He links his fingers in hers. "Len."

"Len…" She strolls the name over her tongue. It feels so intimate – a gentle touch in the dark, an unbreakable vow. He brushes back a wisp of blond on her temple. A dreamy look overcomes his perfect features, and she feels honestly, for the first time,  _looked at_. Admired. Like she is something ephemeral and he needs to take in every glimmer of her light while he can. His eyelashes are white, his features devoid of hard contrast…he is all pale, powdery, gentle sunrise hues and smooth edges. The cupid's bow of his lips drawn in benign aim when he says, "Rin, may I…?"

Her heart lifts on the froth of that fantastical wave, and she breathes – selfish, undeserving – "Yes."

His fingers feather under her chin and cup her jaw. His eyes flutter closed; she's left looking at his quiet approach. The minute part of his lips, the stillness under his eyelids….as if sleeping, as if dreaming while awake.

Isn't that all this is?

A conscious reverie; the nightmare was left roiling on the fringes of their future when he swept her into his arms and they sailed from the tower, the turn to the epilogue, all their pains hoping to be painted over with one phrase:  _happily ever after._

_(Liar.)_

Once upon a time, dreaming was enough. They always fell asleep with each other in fields of luxuriant flowers, the atmosphere billowing with stars that they could reach up and touch, the glow sending warmth to their hearts. Lost in each other and the way they shimmered around the edges, too pure and too impassioned for the infinitum of fantasy. Him, piecing away her bodice with caressing hands til the flowers around her breasts and waist were cast into the flora of their bed, eclipsing them in a silky rain of scarlet petals and pink fingerprints upon skin, until that accursed morning where he would awake, she imagines, in the cold of his palace, and she is left alone in a coffin of thorns.

Now, his lips press against hers and she feels like the free girl again, building fantasies. Who would she marry…what would love feel like? Could someone like her ever be loved – a girl with poison exuding from her touch?

Love must…it must feel like this, for her alone.

So beautiful and  _breakable_.

Staying close to her, he parts the kiss. She flutters shut her eyes to match his expression of bliss, lashes brushing down his cheeks; she is up on her toes, fingers on his lips in the barest breeze.

He breathes, "Rin…finally  _with_  you, it feels – "

"More like true love?"

He kisses her again, sure of himself and strong, and it lifts her from the ground.

**.x.**

_"_ _I've searched forever for you. We are meant for this. For each other."_

_She sobs, driven in a sudden crash to the stone. Looking at him is more painful than this destruction from inside her – she doubles over, nails digging into her face, screaming. She isn't even sure what she's saying. She just needs him away. Away. Listen, please,_ _**listen** _ _. Run back to where you were – dream about me in nonsensical, beautiful ways, the way we did together. Reality is horrific. Reality will kill you._

_The ring of his sword being unsheathed fills the chamber. She is pushed onto her elbows by the weight of_ _**it** _ _; the monstrosity crawls over her towards the pretty threat. The air around her floods with burning black. Under it, she smells her own blood._

_Her cheek presses against the cold floor, but she doesn't recall falling. Her eyes, sewn shut, feel impenetrably heavy…a sleep paralysis having overtaken her, she can barely strain to hear the dance of his footsteps, and to dread his collapse. But it is inevitable. He has done his work in Fate's elaborate novella – he has given a heart to colour the words red and make them stain._

_A searing liquid heat pours around her shoulders, dragging a long finger around her neck in a final caress._

_._ **x.**

"We'll be married, won't we?"

He asks that question so daintily, as if in fear that there is still room for her to say no. He's been carrying her for a little while – they've traveled past nightfall, and she'd tried her best to not complain about all the walking, but it must be the dregs of her sleeping curse making her legs weak. Before she could have compromised, he'd swept her up in his arms in a flurry of frothy petticoats and lacy roses.

She is half love-stricken and comfortable, but half worried that he can maybe feel the twitch of another spider scraping its talons down the inside of her spine.

She glances at him, and he playfully pecks her on the cheek like she is something too novel to help touching. She blushes, answering finally, "If you are willing."

"I want nothing more." After a beat, he scrunches up his nose. "Except to find the way out of here. It wasn't such a journey on the way in, I swear."

It's getting darker. Both in the faraway sky (further than ever, the stars cold) and in the aura of the air, as if the forest is melting around them and will soon trap them in the tar. It worries her – the world is morphing and he doesn't seem to notice.

To distract herself, she walks her fingers across his chest in careful exploration.  _Married_. In a shimmering sequence, she retrieves a flood of imagery from before the curse gripped her: a little girl's faceless, flowery designs for her wedding. Infinite trains to ripple behind her like a breeze in snow. Her hair – so much longer by then, she hoped – decorated with ribbons and diamonds in the constellations of the damsel Andromeda. She would be so much prettier. Roses at her hands, their thorns shaved off, and the inevitable prick on her finger would not even be a shadow of itself.

She lays her head on his shoulder and pulls him closer. Suddenly painfully curious, she picks at the veil that cascades from her hair. A feeling of dread sinks over her and precedes the wary whisper: "Was I going to be married to someone else…?"

He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't seem perturbed. It's been so long, anyways. Whoever it was…if it was anyone…they are gone now. Her memories of her life before are thin and picked seemingly at random, like patterns in lace, beautiful when she closes her eyes and travels through the landscape of them all (her old aspirations and loves and dreams, the taste of sugar, the feeling of sun on her skin, the gentle tug of her hair being braided and the fragrance of lavender outside her bedroom window), but she tumbles through the holes when she looks deeper (her friends, her family, her home). How can she pick up a life from here? Of course…of course he will help her. He will do anything for her. Somehow, that sends her tumbling furthest.

A chilling ghost of movement passes through the trees. Whatever it is inside her stirs.

She crushes her eyes shut – her foolish side searches for distractions from what is coming. "Len…?"

"Yes, Rin?"

"Who are you, Len?"

He blinks, as if confused. She thinks that there should be no reason for her to explain – he knows her best, as there isn't much of her to discover. Sleeping for a century has drained her of all that ties her to earth; her family is dead, her survival on the gambling end of a balance. It doesn't leave him much to decode, besides the fact that he, against all odds, fell in love with her.  _Her_  biggest secret has already been revealed in a shower of smoke and blood. But his? She knows little beyond that she is in love, too, and the fact that he didn't kill her.

(Would that have made it easier?)

"You're a prince," she says, "And I know who you are when you present yourself to me. I know your qualities, what makes you smile, what upsets you. But  _who_  are you?"

"Such a thing can't be defined in words," he responds, his mouth twisting into an uncertain smile.

"Try. We have a long way to travel, I fear." She tucks her head into the crook of his neck. "What are you?"

He adjusts her in his arms and his pace slows. A thoughtful haze pours behind his eyes, and he says, "Nothing, really. Nothing."

The honesty of his tone digs into her heart. She murmurs, "Even here?"

"With you?"

"No, in this…in this world."

He takes a moment to weigh the gravity of her question. He chuckles tepidly. "I'm not certain. You're making me something."

"Len…"

"Let's both – let's accept it, all right?" Halting his steps, he lifts his shoulder to ease her off it, to look in his eyes. She's beginning to know them better than her own, but this fragile sheen is unfamiliar. "Your life has begun anew, and you helped me create my own. I come from a place without love, but you've given it to me – even if for ages it was only in sleep. Now it's ours, for real, Rin."

A shadow rests heavily on those words when they settle inside her.

She reaches to touch his face but he casts his gaze away and sets her gingerly to the mossy floor (so dark it may swallow her up). He is wary of her bare feet. A deep breath heaves through him, and she catches his cheek again – how her weak heart betrays her with treating him this way, when she knows it would be better to tell him to run. She cannot help it. She wants every bit of him.

She guides his face towards her and smiles best she can.

She needs every single piece.

(So does the cataclysm waiting, insidiously quiet, inside of her.)

She cannot let him do this. She cannot let him try and write his  _only_  story in a burning scroll, unwitting to the flame in her hands. If her past has been torn to pieces by  _it_ , then his future is painfully clear – the forest whispers it, and so does the cut on her finger. It is not his fate to redirect.

As they move on, she trails a few steps behind him, hand in his, the beast drumming a foreboding tune in the blackness of her ribcage.

**.x.**

It doesn't end. She has a distinct feeling of the pathway, of the escape, closing behind them, sewn up like thread in a loom. A foreboding chorus pours through the leaves – this is not what was supposed to happen. They cannot run from the reality rotting in the tower. By the time they finally stop, he has to wipe away her mute tears, and she pretends they're out of happiness.

They rest in the dead silence of the forest. He covers her in his coat and cannot stop apologizing; it's too dark to see his face, so she traces her fingertips over his features as they lay closely. He whispers about how blessed he is to have her, finally, and how sorry he is that he didn't set out for her immediately, but she had never seemed  _real_ : an apparition too kind, too perfect, too enamoring.  _You thought me meretricious_ , she teases _– No, I thought you valuable beyond what I deserved._

They fall into the haze of embrace, love labyrinthine, his hand in hers as they lead each other deeper. Petals of roses catch in their touch, a flood of pink blooming to life beneath them. She feels the warm dawn spread across her shoulders like a misty shower of light. Suddenly, as far as she can see, the skeletal vines have vanished; instead, roses spread to the hills, moving with the breeze of their languid movements like a ripple in a wedding veil. It's beautiful, but her heart is held down.

She knows why.

She knows what poison courses through her veins. The spindle, tiny and innocent, flooded toxins that will clot up her heart and make her lie to his face. It was easy in dreams, when she wasn't entirely herself, but feeling him against her real body makes her aware how much of a danger she is.

The ink has stopped with its florid language, and she can hear it drip to the page, splattering like blood. Waiting for the next step. Happiness is not a continuation – there's a reason the stories stop once the trials have been completed and the tears have dried.

Their story, fatefully, is not over.

She fears she knows the next passage, and  _he_  is not the one writing it.

**.x.**

_She can hardly hear him. Her heart is so loud in her ears; the outside world is deafening, with all this unfamiliar chaos. It only translates to a horrifying din that tears into her head, in a storming mix of the sharp ring of swords against carapaces and the crashing of stone. She tries to drag a hand up to cover her ears, but she cannot move. She's blanketed in the iron sheathe of her own pain, her white dress drenched in red._

_This is her fault._

_Before, when he would wake up and slip from her grasp, she would lay in the field of thorns and know that it would be better if she was alone. She would die on her own. Her tower would crumble. Her body would be forgotten._

_She is better forgotten._

_Now he wishes to protect her – a lethal wish. How many men and women did love drag under?_

For how many did it give flight? _is his doubtless answer, ringing, heavenly, inside her head._

_Not us._

_Never us._

_Please, stop wishing for me, lest we be trapped in our waking dream forever, my poison whispering words of sweetness in your veins._

_A bright ringing, a sound that bursts falling stars behind her eyes, burns through the tower. His sword, ripped from his grasp. She can barely hear his voice._

_Please, stop wishing for me._

_Her eyes snap open._

**.x.**

His eyes are closed, a benign shiver from the cold night running under his thin shirt. She traces its shimmering track up and down his back, her body pressed against his, though she wants desperately to draw away.

She can hear the ink raining to the page. It bleeds into worthless maps, staining her hands.

He wants this to be his, but it never will be.

She cannot doom him to unhappiness. All he's done for her…he does not deserve this.

She brushes the back of her fingers along his brow, over his blonde lashes that glow in cadence with the hue of his skin. His breath is warm on her wrists. He is beautiful, even in the night, but she has seen him ruined once. It terrifies her.

And what of her? Where will she go? Does it matter, with this sin orchestrating the core of her? May she bleed destruction all upon the earth, as long as it never finds him.

She touches his throat – it jumps like the startled heart of something small and innocent.

She's beginning to shake.

**.x.**

_The sword skitters to a pause against the wall, laying rusted in the thorns. Her body drowning, she tries to search for him, but he evades her at every turn – there is a searing desperation in her chest to see him, just once more, to cast her eyes upon him and understand, again, that there is love, here, and isn't it true – isn't it naïve – that love is enough to make the briefest of moments be immortalized forever._

_She wants one more moment._

_She wants him to look at her (to leave forever) and she hasn't had enough of him there hasn't been enough time she still has so much to learn to know to feel to_ _**listen** _ _–_

Princes triumph, _she whispers to herself, but she has never been less convincing._

**.x.**

The roses cushion, silky and soft, beneath them, as she carefully adjusts her hand beneath his neck. Petals curl, alive, in her fingers, as she runs her nails along his hairline at the nape, and her thumbs fit perfectly together at his throat like entwined stems.

She has never been able to give him anything – an illusion of love, of happiness – but she knows that she can take from him. The curse (isn't it, truly, an extension of  _her_?) has already done it by drawing him in with her sweetness, and it will steal again in a way that will hurt him more than this; it will shred him of all he deserves, all he is worth, make his last moments lonely; a man who feels that he is  _nothing_  does not deserve to be erased without the companionship of another in his mind, even if she is a liar.

She presses down hard.

He immediately stammers into consciousness, and she cannot stand to see his expression so she crushes shut her eyes the way she was once terrified to do, lost in the smallest whisper of his gasping.

His hands clutch her wrists, and a sob rips out of her – she leans her forehead against his to stifle his struggle and the empty cold between their mouths sends frigid sparks down her spine. Her nails dig into the back of his neck to keep her grip for how much he's fighting;  _leave it be, leave it be, this isn't your ending_.  _I've seen your end. I know the carnage. You must have felt so alone._

She only manages to shakily shush him and press a chaste kiss to his lips. To awaken him, the way he did for her. To find a better life, and further dreams.

The petals rot around where she lays.

**.x.**

_Not a foot away, he collapses to the floor. For a moment he faces the thorns dripping from the ceiling, but his skull lolls heavily against the stone and turns to her, and desperately she hopes for one more word from him –_

_His eyes stare past her._

_Empty. Pastel blue, the colour of the sky at the dainty fringes of sunrise. The burning crimson horizon pours rich and dark from his chest, staining the white of his skin._

**.x.**

He relaxes in her hands.

The grip of his fingers slackens to a gentle, limp brush, cascading off her wrists and to the roses. The strain of his neck quiets to his unmarred paleness, her thumbs leaving barely a bruise behind. She feels his eyes flicker shut against her cheeks. Asleep.

She draws away. Thorns easily prick into her skin, and dried, dead petals crackle underneath her weight. A separate bloody thrill rockets up her back, spider-webbing between her shoulders – the pattern of the apocalypse, excited by the prospect of the sleeping form, wishing to infect.

She met him in a dream, dragged him by her teeth into a nightmare, and never will she allow him to be caught in one again.

_You're safe from me._

**.x.**

_She mirrors him, perfectly still._

_Whatever the creature was, it has left, leaving dissipated smoke behind. Her hand, finally outstretched, lays in his blood, and her heart flickers slowly, weakly, under the weight of its own fissure._

_In this moment, torn from him too early, she wishes – against all she ever thought she would want – to slip into sleep again, and meet him, happy again, in love again, in a dream. Escape with her, to only part from her arms with an inevitable, sweet return._

_He is fading._

_With him, she lets her eyes slip closed, to the mercy of her triumphant curse._


End file.
